White House Letter; Bush's Book Club Picks a New Favorite

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: January 31, 2005

Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident, was in Philadelphia in early November promoting his new book on democracy when his publisher, PublicAffairs, got a call from the White House. Would Mr. Sharansky be available to meet with the president the next day?

Less than 24 hours later, on Nov. 11, 2004, Mr. Sharansky found himself in the Oval Office in an hourlong conversation with the president about the book, ''The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.'' Mr. Bush apologized for not finishing it, Mr. Sharansky said in a telephone interview last week from Jerusalem -- ''He said, 'I'm on Page 211''' -- but otherwise threw his arms around Mr. Sharansky's theme that spreading democracy is in the strategic self-interest of free societies.

''I felt like his book just confirmed what I believe,'' Mr. Bush said in an interview on Thursday in the Oval Office. ''He writes it a heck of a lot better than I could write it, and he's certainly got more credibility than I have. After all, he spent time in a Soviet prison and he has a much better perspective than I've got.''

Mr. Sharansky's book, a White House must-read that Mr. Bush has been recommending for months to friends, his staff and a parade of recent interviewers, was a leitmotif in Mr. Bush's Inaugural Address on Jan. 20 about ending tyranny. According to the president, its themes will also be part of his State of the Union address this week.

''That thinking, that's part of my presidential DNA,'' Mr. Bush said. ''I mean, it's what I think; it's a part of all policy. Yes, it'll be in the State of the Union. It's in the Inaugural Address.'' In short, he concluded, ''It is part of my philosophy.''

The influence of Mr. Sharansky on Mr. Bush has become part of the buzz of Washington, but a quick read of the book shows that the story loops around more than the chatter suggests. Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharansky, who is now a hawkish government minister in Israel, seem to be in a circular pattern of admiration.

Mr. Sharansky writes in his book of his excitement when Mr. Bush vindicated his views in a speech about the Middle East; Mr. Bush is of course now talking about how much Mr. Sharansky vindicates him. Supporters say the two men are taking the human rights movement in an important new direction, but critics call them na? idealists. Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter, branded the Inaugural Address ''mission inebriation,'' and Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, terms the men utopians.

Mr. Sharansky's big day came on June 24, 2002, when Mr. Bush announced in the Rose Garden that the Palestinians had to replace Yasir Arafat as their leader before the United States would support a Palestinian state -- in short, that there could be no peace without democracy.

''I reread the speech, almost pinching myself,'' Mr. Sharansky writes. ''It was a beautiful expression of the principles I also believed should be the foundation of the peace process.''

For Mr. Bush, Mr. Sharansky's book offered such a similar revelation that its words were woven into the Inaugural Address.

Mr. Bush, on Jan. 20: ''So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.''

Mr. Sharansky, Page 278: ''The diversity of the world ensures that there will always be argument and conflict. But I do believe that there can be an end to lasting tyranny -- that we can live in a world where no regime that attempts to crush dissent will be tolerated.''

Mr. Bush, on Jan. 20: ''We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery.''

Mr. Sharansky, Page 278: ''Just as the institution of slavery has been all but wiped off the face of the earth, so too can government tyranny become a thing of the past.''

In Jerusalem last week, Mr. Sharansky said that his conversation about his book with the president convinced him that ''he had not only read it, but really felt it.'' The two moved from there to the subject of Iraq, Mr. Sharansky said.

''Definitely he felt there were a lot of problems,'' Mr. Sharansky said. ''And he wanted to hear from me whether I believed in the long run that democracy in Iraq is not a fantasy.'' Mr. Sharansky said he reassured the president that it was not, but ''he clearly understood that it would be very, very difficult.''

Mr. Bush said he was given the book last fall by his friend Tom A. Bernstein, a New York developer who is a founder of the International Freedom Center, a museum focusing on human rights to be built at ground zero in Lower Manhattan.

''I think it's an important book and I think people ought to read it,'' Mr. Bush said in the interview last week, repeating his now-constant endorsement. ''So it's a confirmation, I guess, is the right word.''

Photo: Natan Sharansky was invited to the White House to discuss his new book with President Bush. (Photo by Yves Logghe/Associated Press)